102 GL.VUCUS ; OR, 



eternal Spirit sports and makes melody." Of all 

 the blessings which the study of nature brings 

 to the patient observer, let none, perhaps, be 

 classed higher than this ; — that the further he 

 enters into those fairy gardens of life and birth, 

 which Spenser saw and described in bis great 

 poem, the more he learns the awful and yet most 

 comfortable truth, that they do not belong to him, 

 but to one greater, wiser, lovelier than he ; and 

 as he stands, silent with awe, amid the pomj) of 

 nature's ever-busy rest, hears, as of old, " The 

 Word of the Lord God walking among the trees 

 of the garden in the cool of the day." 



One sight more, and we have done. We had 

 something to say, had time permitted, on the lu- 

 dicrous element which appears here and there in 

 nature. There are animals, like monkeys and 

 crabs, which seem made to be laughed at ; by 

 those at least who possess that most indefinable 

 of faculties, the sense of the ridiculous. As 

 long as man possesses muscles especially formed 

 to enable him to laugh, we have no right to sup- 

 pose (with some) that laughter is an accident of 

 our fallen nature ; or to find (with others) the 

 primary cause of the ridiculous in the perception 

 of unfitness or disharmony. And yet we shrink 



